September 26, 2011

Cliff has promised not to meddle in time travel anymore and instead takes up the gentle hobby of genealogy. As he delves into his family history, he is horrified to discover exactly how much the Clayburns suffered at the hands of the Nazis – they were all but wiped out!

Cliff becomes obsessed with the idea of using his time machine, one last time, to alter the course of history for the better by killing Hitler before WWII, thereby bringing his murdered relatives back from the dead (along with countless millions of others).

But in a shock discovery, Cliff finds irrefutable proof that his biological grandfather was actually Adolf Hitler! (his late grandmother, a German Jewish gymnast, had often spoken of how she once met Hitler during the 1936 Berlin Olympics but clearly she hadn’t told the whole story.)

What is Cliff to do? If he succeeds in his plan, millions will be saved but his children will cease to exist. For Cliff, it comes down to a simple mathematics so he continues with his plan.

But how can an American Jew get close enough to the Führer to kill him? Cliff decides that the only way is to compete in the 1936 Olymics and win gold. Then, when he comes face to face with Hitler at the medal presentation, he would a perfect opportunity to strike. To achieve this, however, Cliff (now pushing fifty) will have to beat Jesse Owens over 100 meters.

Cliff has an idea. He used to be a very promising athlete in college but he lacked the maturity and dedication required to get to the top. With his time machine, however, Cliff can stop off in the 80’s, pick up his 18-year-old self (we’ll need some CGI trickery here) and together they can continue to travel back in time to 1930’s Nazi Germany, where middle-aged Cliff can coach teenage Cliff to Olympic gold!

& so begins an adventure combining sporting glory with wartime espionage (‘Chariots of Fire’ meets ‘Inglorious Basterds’) Will our intrepid heroes: old Cliff, young Cliff, young grandma Clayburn (Natalie Portman), & Jesse Owens (Nelsan Ellis) succeed in their audacious attempt to beat the Nazi’s in their own back yard? & will Cliff actually change history for the better? or just make things worse as usual?

September 30, 2009

Timestorm! (PG-13)

Carla Clayburn (aka mom)

Kim Clayburn (aka wife)

December 31, 1969: 3-year old-Cliff Clayburn is in his bedroom playing with the junior chemistry set he got for Christmas. Downstairs, his parents Ted (Zak Efron) and Carla (Elisha Cuthbert) are hosting a groovy end of the decade party. In mixing some chemicals together, Cliff unwittingly unleashes a ‘Timestorm’ that sucks Carla Clayburn into a wormhole and kills everyone in the house except Cliff.

December 31, 2009: 43-year-old Cliff Clayburn (David Schwimmer) is in the same room (now his study) working on a sophisticated chemistry set… but this time he’s not playing! He has only six months to live and he desperately needs a kidney transplant from a suitable donor (e.g. a sibling – unfortunately, Cliff is an only child and his parents are long gone). So he has turned to science for an answer.

Just before midnight, Cliff joins his wife Kim (Elisha Cuthbert) and baby son to see in the new decade. Kim has been looking through some family photos and remarks on the resemblance between herself and Cliff’s mom, Carla. Cliff can’t see it himself and tells her she’s crazy. Suddenly, there’s a knock at the door. It’s Cliff’s thought-to-be-dead mother, who’s just emerged from the wormhole still thinking it’s 1969 and still a bit stoned.

After a few days of Freudian farce and culture clash comedy, Carla decides she doesn’t like the modern world. She really misses her husband, her hippy friends, the good weed and especially her 3-year-old son.

So she asks Cliff help her back to New Year’s Eve 1969 (*better make that Christmas Eve 1969, so she can take back that first chemistry set). She also suggests that this will also save Cliff’s life as his parents can have more children, giving Cliff all the spare kidneys he could ever want.

March 5, 2009

Nuclear Physicist Cliff Clayburn (David Schwimmer) receives an email from himself… from the future. The message instructs Cliff to follow subsequent messages is to avoid serious danger. He initially thinks it’s a joke but after several emails with predictions of the near future (which invariably come true), Cliff begins to take them very seriously.

Cliff is instructed to cancel an upcoming business trip (he is to meet Vincent Castle [Stacy Keach], the CEO of a large corporation, to pitch his latest time travel machine idea). Cliff is informed that when he meets Mr Castle, he will be attacked by Castle’s goons in an attempt to steal his precious time machine plans. In the scuffle that would ensue, Cliff would kill Mr Castle (in self defence) but he himself would be beaten so badly that he would fall into a coma, and only awake years later.

Reluctantly, present-Cliff chooses not to meet Mr Castle… but while he has saves himself, the future-Cliff now finds himself being hunted Mr Castle (who is now alive in the future). To complicate matters more, present-Mr Castle begin to pursue present-Cliff.

Both present and future Cliffs realise that they must work together to find a balance which will help save them both. They cleverly devise a plan that will frame Mr Castle but things go awry… and Castle is killed.